Читать книгу Primitive Time-reckoning. A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples онлайн

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The year as a numerical quantity is only the tardily attained summit of development, and the connexion with the natural year has always been so strongly felt that, except in certain cases such as the Egyptian and Islamite years, the chronological year has had to adjust itself accordingly. Here also we see the point of departure, the natural phenomena which are in the end dependent upon the course of the sun, such as the variation between heat and cold, verdure and snow, rainy season and drought, the blooming and withering of vegetation, between the different trade-winds or monsoons, between abundance and scarcity of food. With these and similar concrete phenomena the time-reckoning is from its origin bound up, and is at first discontinuous, i. e. it fixes the attention solely on the phenomena in question, and not on the year as a whole. The fusion of the various seasons into the circle of the year is arrived at only by degrees: the year is at first counted by the pars pro toto method. The process is therefore similar to that already found in the discussion of the day.